AH: Reason for gloom: Rules for cleaner air would cut rights If Stephanie Salter needs a reason why Americans are pessimistic ( "Why so gloomy? Why so melancolique?" Opinion Page, Feb. 11), she need look no further than the onerous ramblings of Richard Kassel on the same page ( "Still trying to clear the air" ).

Here we find a lawyer [senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council] presenting a case that would make himself and his group millions, all the while painting a picture of themselves as defenders of the land and all things good. Rather than present what proposed regulations [for new standards of national air quality] will incur, he presents extrapolated figures of a warm and fuzzy, postcard world.

What Kassel conveniently ignores, in true lawyer fashion, is the ramification on the quality of our lives.

Do you like your classic car? Sorry, it's evil. It's got to go.

Enjoy a barbecue with friends and family? Put that smog pot out or face the consequences.

Want to go mountain-biking? Not on this or any other dirt road, you don't. Don't even think about sliding into home at your next softball game.

Kassel claims to be aiming his guns at the big guys - the corporate world. He's really aiming his shakedown at us.

As far as "junk" science goes: Those Environmental Protection Agency numbers are produced by scientists who are funded by grants to find and dissect the problems. What happens when the problem is found and dissected? Why, micro-dissect the same problem. Gotta keep those grants rolling in. Scientists have mouths to feed, too.

If Kassel really wants to clean the air, he should start by leaving the common American, and his or her property and place of employment, alone. We have had enough of him and his sanctimonious attitude of damn the costs if it furthers his fanaticism. Take that act on the road to, say, Mexico City or New Delhi, and bring them up to our current standards. We'll be pleasantly amused if Kassel's patronizing, oppressive attitude sits well with those folks.

We're having another bureaucracy shoved down our throats by lawyers with an agenda whose arguments are weak, positions arrogant and true motives suspect. The EPA and its cronies have the credibility of a Simpson alibi. Bill Tauriello Rohnert Park

Many citizens would support using public funds to finance a stadium for the 49ers if the team would agree to these important contractual terms in exchange for public funds:

* If a team owner ever wants to sell, then the public agency providing the public's funds should have the first right of refusal to match the legitimate offer the owner is willing to accept. This right would give the public agency a maximum of 12 months to complete the purchase in order to give citizens the opportunity to vote on the necessary financing.

* If a team owner ever wants to move, the public agency should have an exclusive option to purchase the team at its fair market value, as determined by a panel of three experts whose decision would be binding as to valuation. This method of dispute resolution is common in determining market value. The option would have to be exercised within 12 months of written notice to move.

Public agencies should not enter into financing deals without these conditions being part of the contracts in exchange for public financial assistance. It's simply bad business not to insist on these rights. And it's fair to the team owners.

It's no surprise that the NFL team with perhaps the highest degree of fan loyalty is Green Bay. The franchise is owned by a nonprofit corporation whose shares are owned by citizens. Ed Murphy Berkeley

Mexico and U.S. expansion

George O'Connor (letter, Feb. 9) made the remarkable assertion that "Mexican bellicosity and imperialistic designs to rule North America" were as responsible as were the actions of the United States for initiating the war of 1846-48 by which we acquired half of Mexico's land area.

Americans of the 1840s would have been astonished, and amused, had they been told that Mexico planned to conquer and rule North America. Many but not all rulers of Mexico during those years were inefficient and corrupt. But when their thoughts turned to the nation north of them, it was to calculate how to defend their own territory.

President James Polk said soon after taking office in 1845 that one of his objectives was to obtain California - and other portions of Mexico if possible. He tried, as other presidents had, to get the leaders of Mexico to sell us part of their country. Failing in that, he initiated war.

Abraham Lincoln, then a congressman, voted against the war resolution. Later, while the war was in progress, he noted that "the president sent the army into the midst of a settlement of Mexican people who had never submitted, by consent or by force, to the authority of Texas or of the United States, and . . . thereby the first blood of the war was shed."

Lincoln suggested that Polk was "deeply conscious of being in the wrong." The House of Representatives then resolved that the president had "unnecessarily and unconstitutionally" initiated the war.

Underlying these events, expansionist fever was pushing for more territory at the expense of our neighbors, north and south. Even without armed aggression by the United States, the results almost certainly would have been similar: Americans were going into California overland illegally, and there was open talk of "playing the Texas game" - infiltrate and revolutionize.

Citizens of every country find it difficult to face up squarely to some of the actions taken by their governments. We are not an exception to that uncomfortable fact. Glenn W. Price Sebastopol

Stretch park to ocean

Regarding "Golden Gate Park: West end reawakens" (Metro section, Feb. 2): The contemplated restoration raises the question of whether anyone working on this ever thought of extending the park across the Great Highway to the Ocean Beach?

Or must the different jurisdictions of The City's Recreation and Parks Department and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area forever separate, by a boundary of asphalt, what could by simple application of Olmsted principles become a continuous park space of magnificent amenity? Peter Seidel San Francisco

Guns and violence

Your headline reads: "Guns blamed as U.S. outstrips world in murder, suicide rate of kids" (Feb. 7). To prove it, a wealth of melancholy statistics is brought forth and the article states no fewer than four times that these deaths are "caused by" guns or firearms. At one point, it says that "guns are the primary cause of homicide among children."

Yet this same article quotes Holly Richardson. When this spokeswoman for Handgun Control Inc. says, "We are a more violent society," she comes much closer to the truth.

And that truth is that if we continue to insist on holding an inanimate object responsible for our social ills, then we - as a society - already are well and truly lost. Allan K. Lindsay-O'Neal San Leandro

The "you know' syndrome

Are we having a "you know" epidemic? It seems that way. It is rare to hear anyone speak who does not say "you know" after every word.

Many people are even unaware that they are saying "you know." I find it annoying, and I find myself counting the times the speaker says "you know."

How about you? Do you have the "you knows" ?

The worst ones are the professional athletes. Will it ever stop? Victoria Ahrens San Francisco&lt;